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Tag Archive: Devin Townsend Project


deconstructing badgers

Everyone who has spent a reasonable time on the internet since 2005 knows about the Weebl’s Stuff classic flash animation and infinite tune ‘Badgers.’ It’s almost engrained into my psyche at this point, since my formative years were spent watching and playing with flash animations. I can sing Weebl classics like ‘Crabs,’ ‘Kenya,’ and of course ‘Badgers‘ on demand, and Strong Bad from Homestar Runner has permanently affected my vocabulary. Dag, yo.

Devin Townsend is also very much familiar with this realm of the internet, and is apparently such a fan of the aforementioned Weebl classic ‘Badgers’ that during the writing and recording sessions of 2011′s Deconstruction, he recorded a cover of the track. My interests have official come full circle with a powerful nostalgia bomb. Check it out:

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It’s been awhile since we’ve been able to adequately express our love for all thing Devin Townsend. His latest record, Epicloud, saw release back in September, and since then he has pretty much been touring non-stop. He’s released a few updates via his official Twitter, but nothing substantial. And while we still don’t have any real news on his two upcoming albums, Casualties of Cool and , we have just been given a small snippet of a new song that may appear on what of those two albums (smart money says Casualties).

The song, which you can listen to above, is simply called ‘Ode to a Parking Lot’, and while it seems far from finished, it is quite nice. Very reminiscent of what appeared on 2011 album, Ghost. We’ll be sure to keep you all updated as more news becomes available regarding all things Townsend. And don’t forget to check out the Devin Townsend Project on tour with Gojira, and The Atlas Moth. There’s still a few more days left of this bad boy.

- EC

deadite

O hay, it’s The King Of Procrastination! I’ve been letting the world of music pass me by the past couple of months as I’m creating my website and writing my horror novel and almost let the top of the year list slip by me. Luckily, Riddick the Cat called me up yesterday and told me to get the hell to work with this because I’m a “better interest to him than the human he lives with.” So there’s that. But, why shall we be bound to doing a list in a multiple of five? “Nay,” says Deadite, “Let’s beat the system and do eleven top albums of the year!” So dark, edgy, and kvlt.

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alkahest

So it’s Wednesday at 3:43 AM the week these year-end retrospective lists are being published and I’m scrambling to edit my fellow writers’ contributions when I’ve barely even started mine. To be honest it hasn’t even quite settled in that 2012 is just about over. As I’m writing this, there’s about a week and a half left of the year, and it puzzles me. It feels like just a couple of months ago that I was doing this exact same thing for 2011, only this time I seem to be much busier and everything looks different. The site, wordpress, and even my staff group have all changed.

We’ve picked up a number of fresh faces this year that you’ve already seen these past few days, but you may have also noticed that a couple of people from last year are no longer with us. A lot of people have come and gone over these past three and a half years that I’ve been doing this Heavy Blog thing, and most of them sort of float around and hang out when they can. The most important ones that come to mind right now are Dan (Dormition) and Chris (Disinformasiya), both of whom were very instrumental and valuable in the growth of this site, and it was sad to see them part ways with us. Without them (Chris in particular), I might have not kept this thing going this far. I love both of those guys dearly, and you can keep up with them at The Monolith, which you should bookmark if you haven’t already. Ya jerk.

Like I’ve said, this year has been busy. I don’t talk about my personal life much here despite the fact that it’s my blog, but what better time to get all personal than a year-end retrospective? As you may have noticed, I’ve been a bit more of a hands-off editor and the scheduling of posts have been a bit less rigid and frequent than they used to be. I’m at the tail end of my college career and I’m currently in and out of internships which have kept me busy and often away from Heavy Blog. Between classes, internships, my “actual” job, and this website, my hands are pretty full. You (and I, for sure) can thank Evan (Juular) for his help with editing since Chris’ departure as well as Damien, Noyan, Gunnar (DeusExMachina), Cody (Tentaclesworth), Spencer (Inhumed), Anthony (Alucard), Greg (Red Bruschetta), Atif (Dr. Killjoy), David (Riptide), Ridge (Deadite), Colin (Momento Mori), and Geoff (Denisovich) for sticking with me and making sure there’s enough content each week and that this site keeps going strong. Also a strong word up to Ben Robson who took over Heavy Blog recently and decided to stick around with us behind the scenes and Chris Collins, our resident photographer. These guys are awesome, and they manage to put a smile on my face every single day.

2013 promises to be even busier with my next internship, impending graduation, and career, but hopefully that doesn’t stop this site from growing and providing daily content that helps to promote and further our favorite genre of music. Thank all of you for sticking with us!

So with all these feels out of the way, here’s what most of you care about, my albums of the year:

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juular

I’m not going to go on about how great 2012 was for music, because everyone of my co-writers has already done that and then some. There’s no denying it was great, so let’s just move on. I’m writing this list pretty last minute, as I’ve had my choices locked in for some time, and I thought, “Hey, I’m not confused about anything, so I can push it back as far as possible”, and that was a terrible idea, as I’m now scrambling to get this thing finished, and having a hard time really talking about why I like these albums. However, I was the one who reviewed a lot of these, so if you find what I have to say on each individual one lacking, just go read  my review or the reviews of the other albums written by my fellow contributors.

Honestly though, I did not love 2012 as much as everyone else. Maybe it was the events in my personal life that caused me to have such a poor outlook on a lot of the earlier releases of the year, but it’s hard to deny the fact that I just did not connect with nearly as many metal releases this year as I did last year. It’s a shame, but not something I’ve overly thought about, because I’ve found other music to enjoy throughout the year. That being said, I did happen to find a good handful of great albums that I anticipate listening to for many years. Like I said, I’ve had my choices for my list picked out for some time, and that’s because I knew which albums I loved, and which albums I wanted to continually listen to for many years to come. I wasn’t wowed by a lot of the big name bands; I found Meshuggah and Gojira lacking a bit, which were two of my my anticipated albums of this year, but that’s okay. Sometimes you just can’t connect with certain albums. And even  though metal wasn’t all that great for me this year, I still love the genre, and it’s still my favorite type of music to listen to. Anyways, that’s why I listen to metal, and that’s really all I have to say on the matter, so here’s my top ten albums of the year.

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damientheomen

T’is that beautiful time of year again. A season of good will, understanding and compassion towards your fellow man — a time for giving, loving and appreciating. The cold may have rolled in and the trees may have shed their once vibrant foliage, but the world finds solace in the love and company of others.  It’s a time to reflect on the memories of the year and plan ahead for the next.

But most of all it’s a time to listen brutal fucking metal and drink a fuck tonne of Advocaat, because 2012 was full of great releases and now’s your chance to catch on releases you may have missed or may have never even heard of. My first draft of this list was composed of 30 albums, which then shot up to 37 when I realised that I had forgotten to include EPs. Everything from new bands that came out of nowhere to blow my mind (We Are Knuckle DraggerBloodshot DawnOddlandExotic Animal Petting Zoo etc) to the old guard continuing their brilliant legacy (GojiraAbortedNapalm DeathDeftones etc) all unfortunately fell by the wayside in the ruthless culling exercise that produced this list. And I regret cutting every single one of them, but alas, if I was talk about every album this year that was great, I’d probably lose your attention pretty quickly. Who am I kidding? You’ve most likely already skipped on to the list and you’re not even reading this bit. I could write anything I want here and no one would notice. Anything at all.

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alucard

Some of you may be aware of who I am. AlucardXIX on youtube, amongst other websites. The guy who does all the Veil of Maya covers, the mind behind Encircle, and another writer on this here great ol’ blog. 2012 was both an interesting and disappointing year to me, musically. Some absolutely astounding albums came out this year, and some serious let downs as well (The Faceless, The Contortionist). Originally it was hard for me to pick a top ten; I thought about all the albums I’ve heard that I abandoned after a few listens, albums I loved at first listen and then wondered how I even thought that to begin with. I thought I could barely muster together 10 albums to begin with, but remembering back to the beginning of the year, I managed this humble fifteen:

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orbsonb

I have sinned: I waited until the last minute to do a lot of my music-listening this year. This is partly because I spent the months of July through October trying to smash together my own full-length album, Xians, with no success whatsoever; look for it on approximately zero best of 2013 lists! Nonetheless, I dutifully managed to get an earful of everything I wanted to hear in time to write a year-end best-of list. Below are my top ten favorite albums of 2012. Click the links for some of my favorite tracks/videos!

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momento mori

2012 has been an amazing year for music, and I find myself hard pressed to pick fifteen releases that I would consider to be the best and cover everything I want to cover. Nevertheless, here are the fifteen best albums of the year, in my humble opinion.

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As you may remember, Devin Townsend called out to fans asking them to perform along Epicloud lead single ‘Lucky Animals‘ and submit the resulting evidence to Inside Out Music for a chance to be in the song’s forthcoming video. While it took a little while for the footage to be edited together, the result is available for viewing pleasure! Metal Hammer unveiled the video earlier this morning, but you can feast thine hungry eyes below:

Said Devin on the video:

Hey guys!

So here’s what we came up with for Lucky Animals! We tried to use at least a clip from everyones contributions, I really hope we succeeded =I …The sync was a little difficult with some of them, and the quality varies between them all, but man… such fun! It’s a great feeling to see people having a good time, and it makes us feel great that we’re all having a good time with such a dumb song. Thanks a lot for this! Feel free to post your full videos on Youtube as well!

I regret not making an idiot of myself for this. Laziness, poor self-esteem, and procrastination, am I right? Epicloud is out now on Inside Out Music.

- JR

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